


My Son

by Castle_Of_Glass



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux, Phantom - Susan Kay
Genre: Erik has Issues, F/M, Married Couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-08-14 01:48:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20184226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Castle_Of_Glass/pseuds/Castle_Of_Glass
Summary: Erik's inner thoughts are explored when he finds out that Christine is pregnant with their child.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> SO. This requires some backstory. 
> 
> I’ve been in the PotO fandom for several years now, and only recently got back into it after one HECK of a hiatus. After reading and re-reading three translations of the Leroux novel and getting my hands on another copy of Susan Kay’s spinoff, I started remembering that hey, don't I have some Phantom content that I’ve never posted anywhere??
> 
> Some are quite long (like my own version of the story, which is still undergoing serious rewrites), but others are just some one-shot/what if tidbits.  
This is one of those tidbits.

_I was on my knees once more.   
_

_It had become a habit as of late.  
_

_God had seemed so indifferent throughout the half-century of my life that I had long since abandoned all thought of ever calling on Him. I had viewed Him as merciless, unfeeling; as a cruelly-placed object in humanity's line of spiritual sight, but ever out of reach._

_In short, the Creator of All and myself were not on speaking terms.   
_

_At least, were not until she came along._

_Until something began to change. Until she completely dismantled me. Until I first looked into her shining eyes to find they held no fear of me, only an overwhelming sense of utter sincerity. . . until I realized the emotion she felt when with me was nothing short of love. _

_At the back of my head my hands clenched, convulsing, into fists.After a taste of happiness, this was how I was to finally be repaid for a lifetime of apostasy?Or rather, how another was to pay? Another who had done nothing?_

_My lungs seemed starved, even as I breathed deeply. I tore the mask from my face and cast it from me._

_I had no coherent words, nothing in the human language was adequate enough._

_Nothing could manifest what roiled in my heart or mind.   
_

_Whether I was raging at the Almighty or imploring Him, I could not tell . . .   
_

_________________________

She was mine now, willingly mine. My living bride. My living wife.

It was all so unrealistic, so perfect, that I could scarcely believe my own senses. 

When alone I believed, in the stillness, that I had imagined it all; imagined her and created a fantasy that would come crashing down around me any moment . . . and then the fantasy considerably altered when Christine became ill.

She had always been strong, hence she had always pushed herself beyond human expectations when employed at the Palais Garnier. Overnight, that changed. 

It was gradual. Whatever vintage I'd taken from the wine cellar every few nights had always been praised highly by Christine, suddenly she would find the taste bitter; while I would find her choking on her first sip. Within two months, she would daily move food around on her plate without bringing any to her mouth. Her excuse was that she simply had no appetite. 

But the real reason was far more severe—within the next few mornings, I truly began to realize she was seriously ill.She could not keep down anything; be it water, food, or the medicines I gave her. I always made her go to bed the instant the attack past, but even then she was reluctant. "Don't turn yourself into a worried old man, Erik," she said more than once, "I'll be over whatever in the world this is soon enough."

But it did not pass—at least, not for a few weeks. 

One morning, insisting that she felt absolutely fine, she begged me to let her go into the parlor and sit at the piano. I had hardly given my consent before she leapt from the bed, so radiant and vivacious that I was convinced she must have truly felt better.

And for the entirety of that day and the next, she was. Until it began all over again.

It was an erratic affliction, one that seemed determined to ravage her body until her she never knew what each day would bring. I did not reveal my thoughts to her, but it nearly drove me mad. I could not imagine what on earth this was that had taken hold of her.

If Christine knew, she did not confide. But that did not occur to me.

For several weeks, this pattern continued, in an unpredictable cycle that only served to confound me. I did not learn the truth . . . until the evening when I passed by her bedroom.

It was the one place in the house I had never entered without Christine’s express permission, and the arrangement still stood after our marriage. She had protested it before, half-heartedly and genuinely, but I still stood firm.

But tonight, the door was not closed as it normally was when she arranged her toilette in the evening. It was opened wide, and as I passed, I saw her standing before one of the two mirrors in the house, the one that was attached to her vanity table.

She was clothed in her chemise and dressing gown, with her hair hanging loosely about her face. Her rose extract and a washcloth were sitting ready beside the water basin, but she was not using them. She was instead standing with her back to the mirror, and rubbing her temple with one hand, as if her head ached.

This stopped me, and I stood in the doorway. “Christine?”

She looked up at me with more weariness than I’d ever seen in her eyes. It was enough to make me cross the threshold and take her in my arms. In turn, she clasped the collar of my jacket in her hands. We stood there for several moments, not saying a word. 

As I laid my hand at the back of her head, I thought I heard her make a sound that was very much like a quiet laugh. She did it again, and I knew I had not been mistaken.

I looked down at her, bewildered. She looked back up at me, still with that infinite weariness, but with a trace of something else, as well. Something almost like amusement.

I was not fully alarmed, but very close to it. For a reason I couldn’t understand, dread filled me.

She almost seemed resigned, as if she . . . was something more wrong?

Something she was not telling me?

“Christine,” I framed her face in my hands, tilting her head up to meet my eye. “What—for the love of God, what is it? Tell me.”

She kept her eyes locked into mine. Without a word, she reached down to the ribbon that kept her dressing gown tied. With methodical slowness, she undid the fastening and then raised her arms to close her hands over mine. Gently, she lifted them from her face, and my arms co-operated. Christine lowered them down to her abdomen, still covered by her chemise.

She pressed my hands there, but still said nothing.

She did not need to.

As soon as my palms met the fabric, I knew.

Before my fingertips had even sensed the approach of the flesh, I knew what was different.

This was a spot I had already traced with my fingertips, a place I had rested my head, a place I had kissed. I had memorized her, all of her . . . but this was wholly new to me.

Almost mechanically, I pulled my hands out from underneath hers, and ran my fingers over the sacred space. I was not mistaken.

Underneath Christine’s chemise, her abdomen was noticeably, but softly, distended.

Every unexplained minute detail, every ailment and instance of sickness came rushing back to me in a tenth of a second. With a strange sense of calm, I met her eye once more.

I understood the look before she even said the words.

_“I’m pregnant, Erik.”_

I cannot name what it was that settled over me in that moment. For me, everything came to a screeching halt. It seemed an eternity before her words, in that order, made sense.

It seemed even longer before I opened my mouth to answer her. 

“How long have you known?”

My voice was as stark and toneless as if I were made of stone, not sinew. 

Of every thought and sentence whirling in my brain, it was by far the most inadequate of the lot. It communicated nothing I felt. In truth, it was hard to say just what I was feeling.

Christine’s mouth curved into a closed, somewhat anxious smile. “Almost a fortnight.” 

“A fortnight,” I repeated automatically, as if it would make more sense to me somehow if I did. 

She had been aware that there was a child inside of her—my child—our child—for a fortnight.

_And she had not said anything? _

As if she could read my thoughts, Christine raised her hands from where mine had still not moved and clasped them to the sides of the mask that acted as my face. “Erik, I wanted to be sure, absolutely sure, before I breathed a word. And now that I have, I . . . “ she continued, but I heard nothing that she said. 

_My child. Our child. _

The words reverberated off the inside of my skull as if they weighed nothing. 

But they were unthinkable. They were not possible. They could not be possible.

I suddenly wanted nothing more than to tell Christine that she was mistaken, that she _had_ to be mistaken, that she was most certainly _not_ pregnant and that _she most certainly did not have a child currently growing within her that I had assisted in putting there . . ._

With more force than I meant, my hands pressed that soft space of her covered flesh again.

Nothing had changed. The perceptible curve was still there. It was as real and wholly there as she was.

I was not imagining this. I was not imagining her expression, with a smile so deucedly calm that I might have been infuriated if I had not felt so oddly, strangely numb.

Suddenly, my mind was aflame with countless thoughts and possibilities and I did not even know what else.

I tried to comprehend what a child would mean for her; she was still employed at the Garnier and she still frequented her flat adjacent to the home of her old patroness (who was by some miracle still among the living); it was known amongst Christine’s peers that she was in a commitment but not with whom, and God only knew the things they might say or think about her when she inevitably started to show; I would not have any of those prattling ballet tarts or the socialite patrons assuming any notions that were the blackest of lies; Christine had always been strong physically, but her health was not good and what were we to do when the time came?

I knew nothing of the process of childbirth and this was assuming the child even lived to term; if Christine were to miscarry the child and something went horribly wrong, what if she. . .

I would not, could not, continue that line of thought. If it killed me, I would not do it. 

But it was then I made the grave error of giving what was the greatest, loudest possibility of them all room to take hold.

It was the possibility that the child would live . . . and take after me.

I suddenly felt Christine’s fingertips about the nape of my neck, raking through my hair in one of her loving caresses. I tried to breathe, to speak, and discovered that I could not.

The thought of this good, gentle creature having something small that resembled me growing inside of her, of hurting her when the time came, of being her only reward her for all the agony she was sure to go through . . . the thought of it taking her life, of taking her from me in the process of being born . . .

An unspeakable rage that I had not experienced in years suddenly clouded my vision, and I knew I had to get out of that room before I did or said something that I regretted. 

No doubt, Christine sensed the storm gathering under my skin and saw the anger building up in my eyes. Her own eyes were full of understanding as well as sadness as she did the only intelligent thing either one of us did that night—she released me and said nothing. 

In solidarity, but for an altogether different reason, I also remained silent as I mechanically turned and left her, pulling the bedroom door closed behind me as I did so. 

Although I had barely restrained myself from slamming it, the sound nonetheless seemed infinitely magnified throughout the whole house. With that still ringing in my ears, it was the very last sound I was aware of before giving myself over to that bitter blackness.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> . . . I spent all of today writing this and have done nothing productive besides showering and doing the dishes. It was 3:30 before I stopped for food. Truly, I have crossed over into mania xD.

When I came to myself again, I was lying on the sofa in the parlor.  
A searing ache behind my eyes and the bitter aftertaste of dregs informed me of what I had no doubt spent the night doing, and the cracked wine glass upon the carpet only affirmed it. 

I was getting too old for this. 

Disgusted with myself, I reached for the arm of the sofa and used it as support.  
It was there that I stayed for I don’t know how long, waiting to test whether or not my legs would support me. 

Gradually, I sensed that I was being watched, and I caught Ayesha’s blue, silent feline gaze from the doorway. Indifferent, she continued onward down the hallway and disappeared from my blurry line of sight. If she had said, “Serves you right,” in an audible human voice, it would have had the same effect.

With a grunt, I settled my elbows on my knees and rubbed the base of my neck with both hands. From the moment I had opened my eyes, I’d sensed that Christine was not still in the house. Even still reasonably inebriated, I still felt that certain stillness that meant she was absent.

I surmised that the . . . _two_ bottles of merlot I had very efficiently emptied explained why I did not hear her leave. 

I sat back on the sofa and rubbed my forehead and eyes.  
Christine had left. It crossed my befuddled mind that she might not come back.  
As I mechanically, wearily stood, I knew that I would not blame her if she never did.

If _they_ never did. 

It all rushed back to me, as suddenly and as stunning as if I’d had freezing water splashed upon my bare face. 

Yes. For the foreseeable future—however long that would be—when I looked at Christine, if I ever looked upon her again . . . I would not only be seeing her, encountering her.  
_Her_ had now become _them._  
Whether the wine or her revelation had confounded me beyond all reason, I did not know.  
The intial thought and all the vile imaginings that had accompanied it rose up once again, and I internally cowed to them. 

Again and again, the words that had pounded through my skull with every heartbeat came back to me. 

_My child. Our child. My child. Our child._

I supported myself on the piano and stared almost stupidly at the keys, as if they could offer up some kind of clarity, bring some kind of sanity to the situation.  
They did not. But the piece of stationary on the music stand did. 

Numbly, I gathered the paper in my hands, and Christine’s fine, copperplate hand surged into my line of sight. 

_We must speak about this. Come to me when you are ready._

_I love you._

-_Christine_

Numbly, I turned and mentally retraced my steps. The distance between the piano and the sofa was a mere meter, maybe less. At some time in the night, or the early morning, Christine had been that close to me. And I had not perceived it.  
Once more, I raised a hand to my aching brow. The paper fell from my hands and fluttered down onto the carpet. 

Just _how_ drunk had I been?  
Suddenly a thousand possibilities assailed me. Had I said something unforgivable to her?  
Had I done something hateful? 

No . . . I did not think so. I hoped to God I had not. 

I bent down and picked up the message once more. Come to me, it said. 

Had I not been still so well and truly under the influence, I might have laughed out loud; wildly and with all the bitterness I was afforded; I would have laughed at the utter futility and hopelessness of it all. 

Come to her when I was ready to do _what,_ exactly?

When I was ready to face her? When I admitted to her that this was my fault? That this never should have happened, that things should not have gone as far as they had?  
That the life now within her was there because I was not a man, but a weak and craving coward? Because I had let her sway me and I had . . . 

My arms shook as I supported myself on the piano. 

No. This was wrong of me. It was wrong and I had to stop. 

But I could have gone on and on. I could have lied to myself all that I wanted.  
Yet I could never convince myself that this—the existence we now had, the intimacy that had taken place between us, was not something we both had wanted very much. 

In frustration and anguish, I brought my fist down on the piano keys. The sound was every bit as discordant and tumultuous as the pain raging in my head. 

Why had it ever happened . . . 

As much as if confounded me, as much as I tried to convince myself that it was not real, and that Christine's attachment to me was born from some inexorable pity and not something deeper . . . she continually proved me wrong. Every day, every hour that we were together, she was proving me wrong. 

Against all logic, my company, my contact, was something she seemed to genuinely want.  
She had stayed with me, had she not?  
She had endured every conversation, every exchange and every caress and she still sought me out every day. Despite everything, despite all that she knew of me, Christine . . . seemed to genuinely _want_ to be with me. 

Of course, it was unthinkable. It was insane, ridiculous. 

Yet it continuously was happening. 

Once more, I nearly laughed. There was still, in some secret part of me that I was still afraid of, something that wanted to believe this blissful new dream was all real.  
There was still a part of me wanted it so very deeply, that knew it was more real and good than anything I had ever tasted or desired in the near half-century that I had lived.  
And I felt that Christine, somehow, had begun to slowly help me dwell not only in a beautiful dream, but in a hopeful reality. 

A reality that I could believe in, when there were so few things I had ever believed in. 

But God, how that reality was now shaken. . . 

_______________________

I did not see Christine for several days afterward. 

The Garnier began preparing for another production, and she was given a supporting role in the cast ensemble. Rehearsals took up a great deal of her time, and she in turn once more took up residence in her flat adjacent to the Academie. 

Throughout this time, when I could no longer stand the silence in the house across the lake, I still watched over her. Her comings and goings had always meant a great deal to me, and now they meant infinitely more. 

I believed what she had written to me, she was too good to not have meant it. She was willing to wait for me to fully embrace what this new development would mean for us. 

For her sake, I attempted to understand it, to accustom myself to it. And I failed miserably. 

For a time, I forced myself not to venture out of the house; I plunged myself into a thousand different distractions. I tried to compose and discovered that I could not. Books held no interest for me, nor did the laboratory or any half-finished architectural sketch or design I had lately drawn up. I could not focus, I could scarcely think, I could not even sleep for fear of what I might dream. 

Eventually, the house became not a sanctuary but a prison, and I began to spend as much time away from it as possible. At dark and well into the early morning hours, I walked the streets and risked exposure a hundred times over. Without seeing, without feeling, with my brain awhirl and nothing but the need to move, I wandered throughout the opera house and would find myself in the oddest spots without the faintest idea of how I had arrived there. 

Gradually those hours of mania melted into days, which slowly starting to turn to weeks.

And as I watched her from a distance, Christine changed. I saw a beautiful blush alight her face, which had began to fill out at last; I watched her womb grow slowly until it was more noticeable that she was with child. 

When this happened, she took fewer stage roles and instead would assist the set designers.  
I watched as her acquaintances gradually learned of her pregnancy and rejoiced for her.  
The younger stagehands who were little more than teenage boys would go out of their way to help her with menial tasks, would help her rise when she had been sitting and insist she should not stay on her knees so long while painting the backdrops. 

I watched Sorelli turn overnight into a mother hen and fuss over her until they both laughed heartily at her insistence.  
The older stagehands and set painters that Christine knew by name rejoiced in her motherhood and congratulated her. The little ballet girls still met her with all their normal enthusiasm and attempted to embrace her abdomen with all the innocent well-meaning of awed children. 

She only delighted in them all the more and still gave them sweetmeats from her dress pockets. 

With all the carefree, casual vulgarity afforded her, Christine declined talk of confinement or of a pregnancy corset; she continued about her life in that unconventional manner that I loved her for. 

All of these things transpired, she continued in her work and about her day-to-day life, and not one soul knew or even questioned who the father of her child was.  
It was this realization that alerted me to how much they all respected her, cared about her. But God, if they _had_ known. . . 

Even in my mental daze, I realized that during a time that now seemed a lifetime ago, I had made an unforgivable error in assuming that Christine was without friends in this world. And soon, she had an even more unlikely one that I nonetheless should have still guessed might concern himself with our affairs—_Nadir._

For months after Christine and I’s marriage, Nadir had continued to keep a close watch on me (on both of us). And since the night she had informed me of her pregnancy, I had not met with him on the Rue Scribe banks. There was a great deal he still did not know, and I wondered if she had informed him of my reaction . . .

Yet I had it in me to be both amused and touched by the gentle, courteous purity that my oldest and only friend regarded my beloved with. Several times, I watched as he escorted her from one part of the Populaire to another, unprompted; something she seemed grateful for. Perhaps Christine brought back to Nadir memories of Rookeya when she was carrying Reza. Every chance that they met, he politely inquired after her health and carried on conversations about trivial matters for her sake.

Yet as much as I appreciated this, I nonetheless avoided Nadir like the plague. I was not ready to face his waiting barrage of questions; I was already fraying at the edges trying to answer my own.

I saw and learned all of Christine’s new habits, even as I continued to watch her adjust to this new normal at a distance.  
I would have given her anything she wanted, and independence was one of those things I knew she not only desired, but deserved. And while I told myself I must give her that, I never truly stopped watching over her. In those moments when I was weakest, I took great care to ensure that she never heard me, that she never saw or sensed me. 

And yet several times, I am sure that she did.

Though she was always alert and aware, an expression I could only describe as watchfulness would suddenly come to her features . . . and when it did, she would place a hand over her stomach, as if she felt something else. 

Something deeper than mere awareness, something more sacred. 

Finally, the day came when I realized that nearly two months had passed since I had spoken to her, had been near her and felt her. I could endure it no longer. 

I could no longer avoid the inevitable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More cliffhangers? Apparently.  
Please let me know what you guys think! I’m really enjoying this so far :D

**Author's Note:**

> Dang, Erik. Way to kill the mood.  
Like I said at the beginning, this is just a tidbit from eons ago, but I will do my best to pick up the old threads! Stay tuned :D


End file.
